Appearance and physics templates

Components / mounts → Vehicle setup / MVP determines which CAD groups are required. The first configuration has front double wishbones, rear two-point trailing arms, and a CVT driving the rear final drive with a geared front output. The second has front and rear wishbones with CVT rear drive. Their inventories differ: changing suspension configuration changes the required arms, upright and locating-link roles. Tags outside the active configuration remain visible for repair.

1. Choose the configuration and Start fresh from CAD, or Apply vehicle setup in an existing fresh project. Select a required row, select CAD, and Assign current selection or Assign whole components. Use New tagged group for an additional repeated group. The frame uses Use saved frame. Solid bodies, surface bodies, faces and body folders are supported; unrelated features do not silently select whole components.
2. For surfaces, choose thickness plus a SolidWorks material, or exclude their mass and choose a physical visual parent. Weightless skins have no independent collision structure or detachable mounting behavior.
3. Complete Joints & mounts with actual CAD points/reviewed joints, or keep Reviewed template definition and Load template hardpoints from a reviewed file. These are explicit vehicle coordinates, not guesses from mesh bounds. Include the resulting mounting plan before fresh frame calibration.
4. Refresh tagged CAD, then Regenerate physics / package. The worker checks the role inventory, mount plan, CAD properties and source hashes. A changed frame mounting plan requires fresh calibration.
5. Verify package runs the appropriate native scenarios in an owned profile. Full vehicle acceptance is eight scenarios repeated three times and stops on the first failure. Install through Manage project mod after reviewing its status.

The operations below deliberately have different effects:

Operation	Physical graph	CAD properties	Appearance
Save visual assignment	Preserved	Preserved	Saves CAD references; package unchanged
Package saved appearances	Preserved, including runtime Lua and devices	Preserved	Exports pending saved selections and rebinds their existing owners
Align appearance	Preserved	Preserved	Saves a display transform for the next appearance package
Recalibrate properties from selection	Node positions and connectivity preserved	Refit on those nodes; impossible fits rejected	Separate replacement operation
Regenerate physics / package	Rebuilt from current template and CAD	Fresh inputs	Rebuilt bindings
Import physics template	Forked under a new project namespace	Baseline retained	Can receive replacement CAD
Reset to imported template	Restored from the original imported receipt; current project namespace retained	Baseline component snapshot restored	Baseline appearance restored; later edits discarded

If you accidentally assigned bodies in CAD assignment while attempting an appearance-only trial, use Vehicle setup / MVP → Reset to imported template in the Project section at the top of the page. It restores the original template’s component list, hardpoint definition and packaged physics, removing added groups, later appearance edits and custom mounting-point/connection edits from the active project. It leaves CAD documents, the project identity, mod profile and previous build folders intact.

Reset creates a fresh package before replacing the project. Worker failure or cancellation leaves the current saved project untouched. A successful reset saves the exact pre-reset project in <project-file>.template-reset-backups/; its path appears in the status and Log. Edits made by another window during packaging block the reset commit. Reset then opens Components → Appearance, where you select an imported component and use Save visual assignment. Update the mod later with Package saved appearances.

The setup panel shows the imported source and changes the import action to Continue with imported template. Continue only navigates to Appearance; Reset to imported template performs the reset. Importing into a populated fresh-CAD project remains disabled with an explanation beside the button.

An appearance swap can contain different numbers of CAD bodies. It does not move hardpoints, change spring lengths, apply a new material, or change wheel collision. Every revision has a parent receipt, separate physical/appearance hashes, and a new output directory. Property changes require new verification. Frame property changes use the independent frame reference workflow; a generic component mass fit cannot qualify a frame’s elastic response.

Import a reviewed baseline

Choose Import physics template and select the source package’s actual build receipt. Import creates a separate project namespace. Keep the source package directory intact because the receipt checks its package and provenance.

Replace and align appearance by component role, save visual assignments, then Package saved appearances. The new mesh does not supply new physical properties until an explicit property refit or regeneration. A template’s passed tests describe that recorded configuration, not a newly recalibrated vehicle.

For new physical CAD, follow Your first CAD vehicle instead. Historical synthetic packages referenced by old development notes are not bundled installation prerequisites.

Image textures, including carbon fibre

Captured SolidWorks colour images are converted to portable RGB PNG assets, deduplicated by content and included in the mod. Each textured material references its image through BeamNG’s baseColorMap; the DAE supplies per-vertex UVs. Face colour assignments remain separate, including across frame render-region cuts. Missing image files stop packaging with their path instead of silently producing flat paint. Images containing alpha currently require a separate opacity export and are rejected explicitly.

Existing STL-based CAD captures do not contain SolidWorks texture mapping. The export therefore uses 100 mm box projection, with a warning in the worker log. This restores the source image but does not reproduce its original scale, direction, seams, decals, procedural finish or bump maps. Explicit vertex UVs, when present in the geometry record, are preserved. Changing appearance does not change density, stiffness or any other physical material value.

For an existing packaged vehicle, tools/refresh-textured-appearances.py creates an immutable appearance revision from its receipt and captured CAD. It verifies that the physical-model hash is unchanged and that every colour map is packaged. The source texture files must still exist when making the revision; running the installed mod needs neither SolidWorks nor those source files.

The texture output follows BeamNG’s texture cooker naming and PBR material format.